Where’s the Trust?
John 5:1-18
Learning to fly an airplane is a fantastic experience.
Normally you take ground school, that teaches you the basics of how a plane flies.
About how the air flowing over the wings, create a low pressure area
that literally sucks the plane into the air.
You learn that the propeller is in reality a wing that revolves at great speed.
And the air flowing over the prop creates a low pressure area in front of it
that pulls the plane through the air.
You learn about all the different control surfaces,
such as the flaps, ailerons, vertical stabilizer, and elevators.
You learn about all the controls in the cockpit as well as the various instruments
that tell you how high your flying, what direction you are flying, etc.
After you finish ground school, you normally take to the air with a flight instructor setting in the seat beside you.
He teaches you how to take off, how to maneuver in the air, and most important of all, how to land!
Then one day the instructor does something quite strange.
When you get into the plane, he puts a special hood over your head.
Normally, this is your view from the aircraft.
But with the hood on, It totally blocks your view of the windshield and side windows.
All that you can see is the instrument panel, nothing else.
Then he tells you to take off, fly a certain course, do certain maneuvers, and then land again.
All without being able to see outside the plane.
The purpose of this is to teach the pilot to trust his or her instruments.
You see, there will come a time when the pilot will be flying and will find himself
in a storm and will not be able to see the sky or the ground.
You literally will not know which way is up.
Thousands of pilots have been killed in situations just like that.
Instead of trusting in their instruments, they trusted in their own ability to determine
which way was up.
And thinking they were going up, when they were actually going down,
they flew their planes right into the ground.
So the instructor puts the student under the hood, so that the student will learn
to trust his instruments and not his instincts or feelings.
As Christians, we have to learn to trust in God.
To trust in His Word, to trust in the Holy Spirit to guide and direct our lives.
For to put our trust in anything or anyone else, will lead only to a ruined life and an eternity in hell!
I. Trust in Superstition!
As we look at our text this evening, we see a man that has been sick for 38 years.
We are not told just what his illness is.
But it’s assumed that it included some sort of paralysis
since he was unable to get into the pool of water under his own power.
From the brief description we have of the man, he was no doubt very thin,
frail, and to some degree paralyzed.
How many years he had laid by the pool we don’t know.
But we do know that he was not alone.
Many others who were sick and ill and diseased were there as well,
hoping against hope that they could find healing in the waters of the pool.
You see, it was said that periodically an angel came down and would stir the waters of the pool,
and the first person who went into the pool, when it was stirred by the angel,
was healed of whatever problem he or she had.
There is no evidence, however that anyone was ever healed in this way.
The most likely explanation, is that there was a spring that fed the pool from the bottom,
and periodically that spring would cause a disturbance of the quiet waters of the pool.
Evidently, someone in the distant past had been in the pool when this disturbance happened
and when they came out of the pool, they were well or felt better or something like that.
We know today that being in a whirlpool can make a person
with certain ailments feel better, and help them to heal.
Perhaps this is what happened and then the superstition began to grow
about a pool that could bring your health back.
As far back as we can go historically people have put their faith and trust in various superstitions.
The early Romans developed a strange kind of “prophecy by chicken.”
Hens were put in a cage with food.
If they ate greedily, it was a good omen.
But if they ignored the food or showed little interest, it was an unfavorable sign.
As time went on this superstition was abused.
Chickens were often starved before hand to get the desired prediction.
But even this didn’t always work.
During the first Punic War, one frustrated consul threw his hens into the ocean,
declaring, “Let them drink if they won’t eat.”
We may laugh, but how many people today put their faith and trust in superstitions?
Don’t walk under a ladder.
If you enter someone’s house by the back door then you must leave by the back door.
One race car driver won’t race without wearing his “lucky” pair of socks.
Or what about the old “lucky rabbits foot,” of course the rabbit that lost it wasn’t to lucky.
How many people “knock on wood” to keep something bad from happening to them
that they just talked about?
Or what about the “seven years bad luck” from breaking a mirror?
Many people are superstitious to one degree or another.
The problem is that there is nothing to any of these superstitions.
You can break all the mirrors you want, or walk under all the ladders you want,
and it will not effect your life one bit.
Unless of course, you are careless and cut yourself on the glass,
or you bump the ladder and something on the ladder falls on your head!
The man in our text put his faith and trust in a superstition
about the supposed healing powers of the pool.
But neither he, or anyone else was healed.
Such misplaced faith and trust can only lead to disappointment and failure.
It’s only as we trust in God that we can find the emotional,
spiritual, and even physical healing that we need.
II. Trust in People!
We also notice in the story of this man that he placed his trust in other people.
When Jesus asked the man if he wanted to get well,
the man replied that he didn’t have anyone to help him get into the pool
when the water was stirred.
This man was totally dependant on someone else to help him to get into the pool.
But it appears that on one ever did.
If he was to find healing in the water, he needed someone to help him, but on one did.
How many times have we trusted people to do something, only to be let down by them?
How may times have we been disappointed by the people we trust?
A few years ago on “Prime Time Live,” there was a story dealing with the
“Humana” health care system.
In particular, it dealt with one of there hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky.
It was found that this hospital was guilty of over charging its patients
to a degree that was almost unbelievable.
For instance, a special needle used in surgery was purchased by the hospital for only $.89,
but the patient was charged over $100.00 for each one used.
If there is any group of people we need to trust, it’s the people in health care,
but every day we are let down and disappointed,
as we find out how so many of them take advantage of us.
We have also come to the point where we expect miracles from the health care community.
We expect them to cure any disease, any ailment, any medical problem that we have.
And they can do so much.
Replacement knees and joints of all kinds.
Heart, liver, kidney, and cornea transplants.
And diseases that were once thought incurable have been all but eradicated,
like TB, Polio and Diphtheria.
We tend to get the idea they can cure anything.
But it’s just then that are trust fails us,
as we see someone we love die despite all the doctor can do.
It’s not that we shouldn’t have any trust in people, we need to be able to trust people.
But we have to realize, that other people can not meet all of our needs.
They can not cleanse us of our sins, they can not give us eternal life.
They can not give us a new life.
They can not save us.
It’s only God that can do those things and more.
If we trust only in people, then like the man in our text,
we will find ourselves in a very hopeless situation indeed.
III. Trusting in Tradition!
However, this man was not the only one that had misplaced his trust.
He had trusted in superstition and in people instead of God.
But as we see, the religious leaders were also guilty of misplaced trust as well.
When the Jewish religious leaders saw this man, whom Jesus healed carrying his little bed,
as Jesus had instructed him, they charged the man with breaking the sabbath law.
Now granted, there were certain sabbath laws given by Moses in the Law.
The purpose of the Sabbath laws were to keep the Sabbath Day
from being just another business day.
For the Sabbath was to be a day of worship and praise of God, as well as a day of rest.
It was not to be another day of work.
The Law made it clear that anyone who did any work on the Sabbath would be put to death.
The problem was that the religious leaders,
in seeking to better define what was and was not work,
had compiled a whole list of things that a person could not do on the Sabbath.
Such as not being able to carry a needle on your person, for you might sew something.
Not being able to wear your wooden teeth or your wooden leg.
I guess it was considered work to put in your teeth and to put on your leg.
And as we see in our text, it was considered breaking the sabbath law
to carry your bed on the Sabbath Day.
All these traditions and more had grown up around the Sabbath Day.
And they were being enforced as if they had been given by God,
which they had not, they were simply tradition!
These people felt that by being obedient to all these traditions, they would be saved.
That somehow that would make them right with God.
And that by forcing others to be obedient to them that God would be pleased with them.
Listen to what Jesus says about this in Mark 7:6-8,
“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.”
These people were trusting in their traditions to save them,
to make them right in the sight of God,.
But Jesus made it clear that trusting in our traditions will not make us right with God.
The elaborate ritual of the mass is really an extended pageant.
Designed to re-enact the experiences of Christ from the last supper in the upper room,
through the agony in the garden, the betrayal, trial, crucifixion, death,
burial, resurrection, and ascension.
It’s a drama crowding the detailed events of many days into the space of one hour or less.
For its proper performance the priest in seminary goes through
long periods of training and needs a marvelous memory.
Consider the following:
he makes the sign of the cross sixteen times; turns toward the congregation six times; lifts his eyes to heaven eleven times; kisses the altar eight times; folds his hands four times; strikes his breast ten times, bows his head twenty-one times; genuflects eight times; bows his shoulders seven times; blesses the altar with the sign of the cross thirty times; lays his hands flat on the altar twenty-nine times; prays secretly eleven times; prays aloud thirteen times; takes the bread and wine and turns it into the body and blood of Christ; covers and uncovers the chalice ten times; goes to and fro twenty times; and in addition performs numerous other acts.
It’s God’s commands, His words that will make us right with Him.
That is not to say that all traditions are bad.
But we must learn, that even though traditions are nice and have their place,
that first and foremost must come God’s Commands, His Word and His Will.
To trust in anything less is to fail to be pleasing to God and to lose any hope of eternal life.
Conclusion:
Three men had gone fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
They had gone out several miles to their favorite spot.
They enjoyed themselves and caught quite a few fish.
Later in the afternoon a dense fog moved in very suddenly.
By the time they realized what was happening, and got the motor running to head back,
they were completely engulfed in the soup.
They could only see a few yards in any direction.
With their hearts pounding, they tried to figure out which way they needed to go
to get back to the dock.
Then one of them remembered that he had a small compass in this pocket.
Even though its tiny needle defied their sense of direction, they finally agreed to trust it.
The men later admitted that periodically they would shout above the noise of the motor,
“I don’t think the compass is working. I’m sure we are heading the wrong way.”
After what seemed to be forever, they finally saw the images of land emerging before them.
With uncanny precision, they had been brought out of the fog
to within a few yards of the dock from which they has started.
There are times when we feel that we know what is right.
We know what we should do in a certain situation.
We know which direction our life should be headed.
The only problem is that it’s completely opposite of what God says we should do.
What do we do?
Do we do it our way?
Do we go with what we feel is right?
Do we follow tradition?
Do we trust others to tell us what to do?
Do we follow our own superstitions?
Or do we follow the example of the pilot and the fishermen
who trusted their instruments to bring them safely home?
Yes, we must learn to trust in God.
To follow His guidance and direction as given to use through His Word,
and His Holy Spirit.
For it’s only then, as we are obedient to God,
that we will be brought safely home to that heavenly shore!